Last year was a very difficult year for me, health-wise. Read elsewhere if you don’t know why.
I know that sometimes I’ve overreacted, I know that there are plenty of people with much worse things wrong with them. But I’ve had more than my fair share of annoying, niggling, painful, exhausting, frustrating things that have kept me from feeling like myself and doing the things I love doing and feel called to do.
As a Christian, one of the big things I have to deal with is the issue of suffering. If I’m doing my best to please God and follow Jesus, why do I get persistent failures of health? Why does God let this happen. Why doesn’t God do something about it?
There’s no simple way to explain why suffering happens. We just live in a world where things do go wrong – mostly it’s our own fault! But I believe that God tries to use those difficult times and brings good out of them.
Most of what I’ve been through is, as someone recently stated, “just stuff”. Some of it’s caused by my own behaviour (e.g. bad posture, or cycling too hard and fast). Some of it is just being ill – we get bugs, we fight them off, it happens!
I’ve learned a lot through the last year. God really has used it for good. I’ve learned how I cope with illness. How I don’t like to stop but I NEED to sometimes, and that’s OK, people don’t mind (in fact, they positively encourage it!). I’ve learned to recognise and deal with stress. I’ve learned about some physiology and a lot of psychology too! It’s not been wasted suffering.
But I am very frustrated with it and so I’m taking action. I’m going to ask God if he WILL intervene and help me get better. I think I’ve had enough and I want to be myself again, and I’m going to get some good people around me really, persistently, praying for good health for me.
Of course, people have been praying all through the year, and I’ve had various “breakthroughs” as people have done so. I believe that God does sometime heal miraculously. I know that most of the time he doesn’t. But I’m going to go and ask him and see what he thinks or says about it.
And I’m not going to stop when I’m better, I’m going to get these people to keep praying that I stay well once I am well.
This isn’t a sermon on suffering or healing – I’m not qualified for that sort of thing. It’s a statement about my beliefs and intentions.
Let’s get praying properly, let’s go and nag God a bit, and see what happens!